John Carré - A Delicate Truth

But it wasn’t until he went to reclaim the back-up memory stick which, three years ago, he had pasted behind the framed photograph of his maternal grandparents on their wedding day, that he felt a real frisson. The picture was hanging where it had always hung: in a bit of dead corridor between the hall and the lavatory. Every time he had thought of moving it over the years, he had failed to come up with a darker or less conspicuous spot and in the end left it where it was.

And the memory stick was still there now, secured beneath layers of industrial masking tape: no outward sign that it had been tampered with. The trouble was, the picture-glass had been dusted , and by Lula’s standards this was an all-time first. Not only its glass, but its frame. And not only its frame, if you please, but the top of the frame, which was situated well above the height of diminutive Lula’s natural reach.

Had she stood on a chair? Lula? Had she, against all previous form, been seized by an urge to spring-clean? He was in the act of calling her – only to break out in derisive laughter at his own paranoia. Had he really forgotten that Lula had taken herself off on holiday at short notice, to be temporarily replaced by her infinitely more efficient and Junoesque friend Tina, all of five foot ten tall?

Still smiling to himself, he did what he’d set his mind on doing before it went chasing after wild geese. He removed the masking tape and took the memory stick to the living room.

His desktop computer was a source of worry to him. He knew – had had it religiously dinned into him – that no computer ever was a safe hiding place. However deep you may think you’ve buried your secret treasure, today’s analyst with time on his side will dig it up. On the other hand, replacing the old hard drive with the new one that he had bought in Cardiff also had its risks: such as how to explain the presence of a brand-new drive with nothing on it? But any explanation, however implausible, was going to sound a lot better than the three-year-old voices of Fergus Quinn, Jeb Owens and Kit Probyn, as recorded days or even hours before the disastrous launch of Operation Wildlife .

First retrieve the secret recording from the depths of the desktop. Toby did. Then make two more copies of it on separate memory sticks. He did that too. Next, remove hard disk. Essential equipment for the operation: one fine screwdriver, rudimentary technical understanding and neat fingers. Under pressure, Toby possessed them all. Now for the disposal of the hard disk. For this he needed the Beefeater’s box and the Kleenex tissues for padding. For an addressee, he selected his beloved Aunt Ruby, a solicitor who practised in Derbyshire under her married name, and not therefore by his calculation toxic. A short covering note – Ruby would expect no more – urged her to guard the enclosed with her life, explanations to follow.

Seal box, inscribe to Ruby.

Next, for that rainy day he prayed would never dawn, address two of the padded envelopes to himself, poste restante, to the central post offices of Liverpool and Edinburgh respectively. Flash-forward to visions of Toby Bell on the run, arriving panting at the counter of Edinburgh main post office with the forces of darkness hot on his heels.

There remained the third, the original, the unconsigned memory stick. On his security courses there had always been a game of hide-and-seek:

So, ladies and gentlemen, you have this highly secret and compromising document in your hands and the secret police are at your door. You have precisely ninety seconds from now before they will begin ransacking your apartment.

Discount the places you first thought of: so NOT behind the cistern, NOT under the loose floorboard, NOT in the chandelier, the ice compartment of the fridge or the first-aid box, and absolutely NOT, thank you, dangling outside the kitchen window on a piece of string. So where? Answer: the most obvious place you can think of, among its most obvious companions. In the bottom drawer of the chest currently containing his unsorted junk from Beirut resided CDs, family snaps, letters from old girlfriends and – yes, even a handful of memory sticks with handwritten labels round their plastic cases. One caught his attention: UNI GRADUATION PARTY , BRISTOL . Removing the label, he wrapped it round the third memory stick and tossed it into the drawer with the rest of the junk.

He then took Kit’s letter to the kitchen sink and set fire to it, broke the ash and washed it down the plughole. For good measure he did the same with the duplicate contract for his hire car from Bodmin Parkway railway station.

Satisfied with progress so far, he showered, changed into fresh clothes, put the two burners in his pocket, packed the envelopes and parcel into the carrier bag and, observing the Security Department’s well-worn injunction never to accept the first cab on offer, hailed not the second cab but the third, and gave the driver the address of a mini-market in Swiss Cottage which he happened to know operated a late-night post-office counter.

And in Swiss Cottage, breaking the chain yet again, he took a second cab to Euston station and a third to the East End of London.

The hospital rose out of the darkness like the hulk of a warship, windows ablaze, bridges and stairways cleared for action. The upper forecourt was given over to a car park and a steel sculpture of interlocking swans. At ground level, ambulances unloaded casualties in red blankets on to trolleys while health workers in scrubs took a cigarette break. Aware that video cameras stared at him from every rooftop and lamp post, Toby cast himself as an outpatient and walked with an air of self-concern.

Following the stretcher trolleys, he entered a glistening hallway that served as some kind of collecting point. On one bench sat a group of veiled women; on another three very old men in skullcaps, bowed over their beads. Close by stood a minyan of Hasidic men in communal prayer.

A desk offered Patient Advice & Liaison, but it was unmanned. A signpost directed him to Human Resources, Workforce Planning, Sexual Health and Children’s Day-stay, but none to where he needed to go. A notice screamed: STOP! ARE YOU HERE FOR A&E? But if you were, there was nobody to tell you what to do next. Selecting the brightest, widest corridor, he walked boldly past curtained cubicles until he came to an elderly black man seated at a desk in front of a computer.

‘I’m looking for Dr Probyn,’ he said. And when the grizzled head didn’t lift: ‘Probably in the Urgent Care unit. Could be triage. She’s on till midnight.’

The old man’s face was slashed with tribal marks.

‘We don’t give out no names, son,’ he said, after studying Toby for a while. ‘Triage, that’s turn left and two doors down. Urgent Care, you gotta go back to the lobby, take the Emergency corridor.’ And seeing Toby produce his cellphone, ‘No good callin’, son. Mobiles just don’t work in here. Outside’s another story.’

In the triage waiting room, thirty people sat staring at the same blank wall. A stern white woman in a green overall with an electronic key round her neck was studying a clipboard.

‘I’ve been informed that Dr Probyn needs to see me.’

‘Urgent Care,’ she replied to her clipboard.

Under strips of sad white lighting, more rows of patients stared at a closed door marked ASSESSMENT. Toby tore off a ticket and sat with them. A lighted box gave the number of the patient being assessed. Some took five minutes, others barely one. Suddenly he was next, and Emily, with her brown hair bundled into a ponytail and no make-up, was looking at him from behind a table.